


After Finn

by orphan_account



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s02e08 Spacewalker, Protective Bellamy Blake, Sad Clarke Griffin, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:20:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: How Clarke deals with the aftermath of Finn's death. Short story.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin
Kudos: 9





	After Finn

It's Bellamy who finds her after, staring ahead at nothing in particular, Finn's blood still dripping from her hands.

For an hour it's been nothing but yelling and confusion and messengers hurring back and fourth between Camp Jaha and the Grounder tents. They brought Finn's body in. And Raven's still crying and screaming. It's Bellamy who has to tell everyone to calm the _fuck_ down and get back inside and not make things worse.

Clarke just stands by the gate, under the too bright lights of the electric fence, the world spinning out of control around her. Her mother asks her questions as blood trickles down her palms, and the Grounder torches flicker back and fourth with orange light. Her vision blurs and the voices around her start to echo and distort and a band of led is crushing her lungs.

"I just...need a minute...just a minute, Mom, please." She slips away through crouds that part like the Red Sea around her, her feet taking her up to the fallen Ark as her mind goes blank _._ She can't deal with this. She can't think about it. She can't prosses what she's done, so she finds the storage closet in the back of the Ark and closes the door and _cries,_ cries until there's no more tears left. Then she just sits and stairs into the darkness. But her mind has nothing but her memories of Finn--from him telling her he loves her, to him dying in her arms. 

That's when Bellamy finds her. Alone in the dark closet.

The door opens, and Bellamy stands in the doorway, his dark frame standing out in the white lights of the Ark.

Clarke meets his gaze, and then she's crying again, huge heavy sobs that make her body shake, and her cheast heave from the lack of breath.

He closes the door back and sits next to her, in the dark. He puts his arms around her and lets her bury her head in his chest. Her tears soak his jacket. 

"He said _thank you._ " she mumbles. "I killed him and he thanked me."

"There wasn't anything you could have done, Clarke. Finn was dead eather way. At least this way he wasn't tortured." He tried to reassure her.

"I should have listened to Raven!"

"And then what would have happened? Huh? That would have started an even bigger war than we already are in. It's a good thing that you didn't kill Lexa."

"But that's what Raven wanted." Clarke whined.

"Raven wasn't in the right headspace. If you killed Lexa we'd all be dead right now. Finn knew it too, that's why he went with you. He didn't want anyone else to die if they tried to protect him."

Clarke buried her head further into his chest.

"You did the best thing that you could have in that moment, okay, Clarke?" He asks, voice lowering. "You shouldn't torture yourself anymore."

The words do nothing to help what she feels, though. Clarke squeezes her eyes shut beacuse this will haunt her _forever_ ; it will never let her be. A dark space is opening up inside her head and she will fall into it. Slip down into the abyss of insanity.

"What do I do now, though?" she asks.

"Babysteps, Clarke. Babysteps." Bellamy tells her. "But for right now the Councle wants to talk to us."

In the darkness she can't see the concern on his face when he looks at her, but she knows him too well.

"I can cover for you?"

"No, I have to speek to them. And I have to be the one to speek to Lexa. Help me up, please." He bends down to grab one of her hands and pulls her up. Her feet feel like jelly, though, from sitting on the floor for so long, so she is unsteady. Bellamy puts an arm around her shoulders to ground her.

"You ready?" He asks.

She doesn't say anything. Her words won't work at the moment so she just nods her head, balls her fists at her sides and she takes a deep cleansing breath through her nose and out through her mouth. _She can do this._ She can beacuse Bellamy is at her side, looking at her like she's his sun.

"I'm ready." She gives him a determined nod.

He checks the hall to make sure it's empty as they leave the storage closet. She grabs his hand and interlaces their fingers and squeezes as tight as she can, but not so tight she won't hurt him. She doesn't let go until they are around the corner. It's time to be strong again.

In the days following Finn's death, the camp becomes restless. When people see Clarke they start whispering behind her back. Bellamy catches some scared, angry looks being shot in her dirrection. Calling her a murderer. And how could she have done that with out even cringing. Calling her heartless. A monster. She killed one of the 100. All kinds of stuff.

It comes to a head on the seventh day, when he walks out with Clarke to go to the mess hall to get something to eat when someone mumbles a little too loud, "There goes the murder."

He sees red, and whips his head around.

"Did you say spmething?!" He yells out.

A croud of people are in the food line, Clarke feels sick. She's not eating right beacuse every time she comes in there to get her food there's whispering and the nasty looks. Bellamy can't see her like that anymore.

He grabs the offender by his shirt collar and hauls him out of his chair.

"You want to say something?" He yells.

He lets go of the collar and the man flinches away.

"She killed that poor boy," He says not looking Bellamy in the eye.

"You have a lot of nerve, don't you? All of you do. Most of you were ready to hand Finn over yourselves! You were happy to let the Grounders have their way with him."

"But she killed him just to please the Grounders!" The man shouts back, "Who's she gonna sacrifice next, huh?"

Bellamy faces the croud, "Clarke did what no one else was strong enough to do," he yells out. "And everyone of you grumbling about it now is a hyprocrite. You're all alive _beacuse_ of Clarke, safe from the Grounders. So if anyone else has something to say about it thay can come say it to _me_!" 

He looks at them with a wicked glint in his eyes and they flinch away from him. He knows his speech will get around to the rest of the camp. Everyones a little afraid of him like they're afraid of Clarke. Beacuse they were here first, damn it! They saw things, did things that none of these people wouldn't even dream of. And now they're quite the terrifing duo. No ones's sure to make of them, they act like they're in charge of the whole camp.

Clarke is looking at him but her face is blank. There is no sparkle in her eyes, there hasn't been one since she killed Finn, and when she looks at him now her gaze comes from something terrible, far away. He can't read her expression the way he was used to and it scares him to no end. It scares him how deep inside her mind she went; how far she has fallen in side herself. Sometimes he wonders if she'll ever go back to the way she used to be.

No, she will come back. He will bring her back. He won't let her become a shell of herself. He will bring his princess back.

The rude comments and dirty looks stop after his little talk at the mess hall.

"No one knows how to act around me anymore." Clarke says to him later, when they're alone and it's safe to be ungarded for awhile. "Everyone looks at me like I'm a _monster_."

"Do I look at you that way?" He asks, and the look in her eyes is heartbreaking.

"No." She mumbles.

"Then it's not _everyone_ is it?" He asks, and she gives him a toothless smile and he thinks, _Please come back to me._

Bellamy helps her through the nightmares, when they come for her. The waves of guilt and remorse breaking her all over again. The first night it happens she wakes up screaming, forehead slicked with sweat. Bellamy's there in a moments notice. He grabs her hand and holds it tight.

After that night he looks around the Ark if there are anymore two bedroom apartments. He gets lucky when he stumbles across an abandoned one in the remains of the Ark. Down some hallway. It's nothing fancy, just two bedrooms, one bathroom. But it's private, and thats good enough as far as Clarke's concerned. No one goes down there anymore. No one will be able to hear her scream as she wakes up from her nightmares.

Bellamy finds a bed that's not being used. So he gets all of his and Clarke's stuff and hauls it to their new home. 

Bellamy knows what she needs. So they don't talk about it. She's not about to ask if he can sleep with her when she gets a nightmare durring the night. And she needs the space from the judging looks, whispered words, all that bad stuff. In their new apartment no one goes down there, but them.

She still dreams of that night when she killed Finn--the fear in his eyes, her telling him that it will be okay. Sometimes she doesn't get there in time and the Grounder's _do_ torcher him, and then burn him the Grounder way.

That's when she wakes up. But the other nights the nightmare reaches it's peak and she wakes up covered in sweat and a scream on her lips.

But thoes nights are when Bellamy comes to her room and holds her hand. He brings her a glass of water, and cuddles her until she falls asleep again. That's when he would go back to his own room.

 _It's all your fault._ Dream Finn whispers in her ear. _I died beacuse of you!_ She shudders at the image she created of him in her mind. Sometimes she sees him during the day when she's not even asleep. 

She wakes up with a gasp and her cheast heaving. But then Bellamy comes in and comforts her like its his job. She tells him what her nightmare was about. "I told him that I loved him." She mumbles to him one night. "But that was just another lie I told." Her eyes burn with tears, but she holds them back.

Bellamy doesn't say anything. They _never_ talk about Finn, it's like an unspoken rule between them. If you say his name then they kind of break the fantasy world they've created inside there tiny apartment. 

"Am I a bad person?" She asks one night, turning to face him on her bed.

He stares dead into her eyes, "For keeping a man from being cut to death? I don't think so."

"I was really falling in love with him, though. So it really wasn't a lie, more like a half lie. But then I found about Raven, that they were together and I felt so cheeted and humilated. So I just kind of gave up on him on that front." His jaw clenches at the memory of Finn lying to both Clarke _and_ Raven.

"You can be angry if you want to, Clarke."

"But I don't deserve to be, though. I killed him and he didn't even get to redeem himself."

"Stop! Stop saying stuff like that, Clarke. It's not about deserving. It's about letting the past go." He tightens his hold on her and puts his nose to her hair and takes a deep breath.

"He did it for me. Lexa said that he died for me." She whispers into the darkness of the room.

"He's the one who killed all of those innocent people. And he got the consequences that he deserved. But once he decided to give himself up there wasn't anything even _you've_ could have done." 

"But now Raven hates me. She still hasn't talked to me about it."

"She will. She just needs time." Bellamy says.

Clarke nods, she hopes that he's right beacuse she misses Raven. She would still pick her first, even now. 

"Can I sleep here, with you?" He asks. Clarke nods again and her eyes feel heavy so she gives up on trying to keep them open. In her last moments of consciousness she feels him press a kiss to her forehead.


End file.
